


Six months is no time at all

by kelkblr



Category: The Smoke (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mention of past Kev/Trish, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelkblr/pseuds/kelkblr
Summary: There are plenty of things Kev Allison shouldn't be doing, and this is probably one of them.





	Six months is no time at all

**Author's Note:**

> Kev is quite seriously ill at the start of this (post-canon) so please bear that in mind if mental health is a difficult topic for you.

_October_

 

The flat that sometimes felt too small with two people living in it now feels too big with only one. The fairytale has burnt itself out and there’s no happy ending. When Kev stands on his terrace and looks out over the city all he sees is desolation.

The cloying heat and bright sun of summer have given way to a blustery and damp autumn chill. The flat is surprisingly clean given that it's been empty for eight weeks and, when Kev dares to investigate the fridge, he finds an in-date pint of milk and a distinct lack of rotting food. Which means that someone has been in while he's been away and yet somehow he can't bring himself to care. He makes a cautious survey, just in case it's the work of some particularly house-proud burglars, but everything seems to be in its place. His bed is even made, which he doesn't remember doing that last day.

Medication on the countertop, crisis number for the community mental health team pinned to the cork board, appointment card for his psychiatrist in his pocket: he's all set for his return to normal life.

Kev gets changed, glad to be rid of clothes that aren't his, and shaves, cautiously at first, not really wanting to look at his own reflection in the mirror. When he does look, it's a distinct anti-climax because he looks much as he always did; a bit thinner, perhaps, and his hair needs a cut, but he still looks like him.

 _Get an early night_ , they'd told him before they discharged him from hospital. The pharmacy bag sits invitingly on the countertop; he only has to take a couple of the small round tablets and he'll sleep until dawn, coddled into chemically-induced unconsciousness.

Kev settles on the sofa instead and turns on the TV. He's never been the type of person to watch hours of TV but there's something restful about letting the noise and colour wash over him without having to think about very much at all and he sits through two episodes of Diagnosis Murder and one of Hawaii 5-0 before his disturbed from his stupor by a soft knock at the front door.

Kev gets to his feet, wincing a little as his muscles protest the hours of inactivity, and moves cautiously towards the door. It's got dark while he's been watching TV; another side-effect of it being October. A quick glance at the clock on the cooker tells him that it's nearly 6 o'clock. Since he'd made an effort to tell almost nobody that he was leaving hospital today, it's with more than a little apprehension that he opens the door, only to find the landing deserted.

Kev stands in the doorway for a moment, looking both ways and listening out for any hint of human presence, but there's nothing, and then he looks down and sees the carrier bag sitting on the floor, the handles tied into a neat knot. Takeaway curry - from his favourite curry house around the corner, by the look of it.

Further investigation reveals a chicken madras, naan bread, and onion barjis. Kev looks around again, half-expecting to see a delivery guy who's realised he's delivered to the wrong address, but no one comes. Kev decides that someone else's misfortune is his good luck and takes the bag inside.

He eats the curry in front of the tv, washed down with a can of Coke he doesn’t remember buying. Around eleven, he gets a blanket from the spare room because it’s getting cold and he can’t remember how to turn the heating on.

 

_November_

 

It’s been years since Kev was last a bystander on Bonfire Night and he feels restless and out of sorts as he stands on his terrace. watching the rockets shoot up into the night sky and listening to the cacophonous symphony of sirens. He’s too used to the annual manic routine of it, running from one out of control back garden bonfire to the next bit of booby-trapped petty arson. It feels like a dream now, like a life lived by someone else.

He’s off the tablets and nothing feels the way he expected it to. He’d half-expected, half-dreaded it all coming back, ending up back in hospital, or locked up, and it had felt almost like a let-down when the breakdown didn’t happen. He’d like to think it’s because he’s getting better, that his bi-weekly sessions with his psychiatrist are actually getting him somewhere, but he’s not so sure.

Kev doesn’t have much confidence in medical professionals. They haven’t discussed much of anything in his appointments, and maybe never will: there are dark corners in his soul he never wants anyone to pry into. But being off the tablets means he can drink - the beer in his hand is testimony to that - and he can think a little more clearly. And, he supposes, that means he has to think about the future and the desk job being dangled in front of him like he’s supposed to be happy about it.

Kev is under no illusions about being allowed to return to his old position. Absconding with LFB property is a Daily Mail wet dream: he can just picture the emails that have been undoubtedly been flying around and the frantic arse-covering in the senior ranks. He’s an embarrassment, an even greater inconvenience than he was before, and now they don’t know what to do with him. He grins to himself as he thinks about just turning up at the station, walking in like nothing’s changed, and seeing how much chaos he can cause.

Kev turns his head at the sound of the faint click to his right. His neighbour, Muriel - 80 if she’s a day and surprisingly healthy given her chain-smoking and breaking her hip in a fall last year - shuffles out onto her terrace, acknowledging him with a nod as she lights another cigarette.

A particularly loud series of explosions echoes across the estate; cheap, probably illegal rockets. Muriel doesn’t even flinch. She leans on the wall and peers out across the city towards Canary Wharf.

“Bit cold tonight,” Kev offers.

Muriel shrugs. They don’t speak very often, not deliberately but simply because their paths don’t usually coincide, and Kev can’t think of a topic to keep the conversation going.

“Your young lady moved out then,” Muriel says unexpectedly. It’s not a question.

Kev looks down at his hands, pressing down on the brick wall. “Yeah.”

Muriel sniffs and takes another drag of her cigarette. Kev expects some more questioning, maybe an opinion on what he should or shouldn’t have done to salvage his relationship with Trish, but she doesn’t say anything. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of another siren cuts through the night. Kev judges it to be heading towards the A12; maybe a car crash. Kev loses track of how many he’s been to over the years.

Muriel doesn’t stay outside for long, stubbing out her cigarette against the wall and muttering something about rain. Kev stays out until just after 1, before eventually retreating to the warmth and safety of the sofa and his nest of pillows and blankets when he feels the first spots of rain on his face. The flickering lights and gentle murmuring of the TV wash over him as he settles back and lets himself sink into blissful numbness.

 

_December_

 

Kev has a whole list of places he’s supposed to be avoiding right now, starting with the station. It’s important, his psychiatrist says, to confront his fears, but in the right way, and at the right time. Slow and careful progress to help him come to terms with the trauma, help him develop appropriate coping strategies, is what he should be aiming for, not shock therapy.

Sitting in a cafe just down the road from the station, close enough that he can see the frost on the pavement in front of it, is definitely not something she would approve of, but it’s 7am and Kev hasn’t slept for almost 24 hours and he’s well aware that his decision-making isn’t at its best. Which is why, when he sees Dennis come out of the station and start walking down the road, Kev drains the last of his tea and heads outside.

Dennis doesn’t see him until he’s practically upon him, too busy fiddling with his phone, and his face goes through a complicated series of expressions that Kev can’t quite decipher before he finally smiles and says:

“Hey.”

“Long time no see.” Kev’s voice sounds scratchy and unused to his own ears, like he hasn’t spoken to anyone for days. Which, he realises, he hasn’t, because his support worker, Dave, had to miss a visit yesterday to cover someone else’s shift, and with Christmas coming up all the nicely predictable routines of his life have been turned upside down.

Kev used to like Christmas, before. Now he hates everything about it. He’s started watching DVDs just so he can avoid the constant adverts for Christmas tat and happy families. He waits for Dennis to ask how he is, in that way people do when they don’t really want to hear the truth.

“You want to grab a coffee or something?” Dennis asks instead.

They end up back at Kev’s flat, and Kev cooks pasta while Dennis sits on the sofa, right on the edge of Kev’s sofa bed nest, and watches kids’ cartoons on TV. He looks pale and exhausted; it’s been a tough shift, with three RTCs and then an LPG leak on an industrial park followed by a kid who fell off a garage roof and impaled his leg on a metal fence post. Dennis tells Kev all about it while they eat, and Kev lets him talk, lets the words wash over him, and smiles at the new confidence in the way Dennis speaks, the way he moves. Finally Dennis says:

“Bit different, without you around.” It’s said in a neutral tone, nothing to read into it either way.

Kev forces a smile. “Bit less stressful, yeah?”

Dennis just shrugs, like Kev didn’t once hold him over a stairwell with every intention, in that instant of white-hot rage coursing through his veins, of letting go. “It’s different,” he says again.

Everything else that happened sits between them, unspoken. It feels like it happened a long time ago, a lifetime ago. Almost like scenes from someone else’s life, a different world they can’t revisit.

Dennis goes and sits back on the the sofa when they’re done eating. When Kev returns from the bathroom, Dennis, exhausted, has fallen asleep, his head pillowed on Kev’s jacket.

Kev lets him sleep. He washes up their dishes and then, after a brief hesitation, climbs onto the sofa bed a safe distance from Dennis and watches cartoons, determined to stay awake until Dennis wakes up again.

Instead Kev wakes up to a setting sun and Dennis pressed up against him, snoring softly. It should be uncomfortable, maybe a little awkward, but somehow it isn’t: Dennis is warm and solid and the weight of his hand curled around Kev’s bicep is strangely reassuring.

 

_January_

 

Kev wakes up to the clatter of dishes in the sink and the sound of muttered swearing. He rolls out of the sofa bed, wincing a little as he stretches and his scars pull taut, and follows the smell of food into the kitchen.

Dennis is busy unpacking the takeaway and he spares Kev only the briefest of smiles before returning his attention to spooning the rice out onto the plates. And, just like that, Kev knows who brought him food when he first came home from hospital, all those months ago. It’s a gut instinct, nothing more than a feeling, but he knows he’s right.

“Peeing it down out there,” Dennis says conversationally as he hands Kev his chicken madras. “How’d your first day back go?”

“Nine ’til five, moving paper around; what’s not to like?”

Dennis doesn’t patronise him with words of sympathy or pitying looks. He never does, never demands the exhausting emotional investment other people do to help them feel better about Kev’s situation.

“That’s how you get promoted, yeah? Twelve months, you’ll be running the whole show.”

Kev grins. “Yeah, maybe. Think you can cope with that?”

“Gotta do a better job than that lot.”

They eat, Dennis tapping away at his phone, Kev reading the paper he’d picked up on the way home.

“Thought I’d cook tomorrow,” Kev says, spearing the last pice of chicken with his fork. “Lasagne; how does that sound?”

“Can’t,” Dennis says, and something about the way he says it makes Kev’s eyes snap to him. He hasn’t heard that tone for a long time, nor seen that particular look in Dennis’ eyes.

“Why not?”

“Got a date.” Dennis hunches his shoulders like he’s bracing himself but Kev feels like he’s the one who needs support.

“A date,” he says flatly.

“Yeah. So, I thought it’s probably not worth me coming round, after. I’ll just go back to mum’s.”

“Fine,” Kev says, because of course it is. It has to be fine. _He_ has to be fine. He can’t let Dennis see that it feels like the floor has given way beneath him.

Maybe it’s a good thing, he thinks, and that thought keeps him going through the next day at work, when all he can hear is a hundred variations on Dennis’ voice and all he can see is how defensive Dennis was about telling him. It’s a truth bomb he needed, a shot to his system to understand how dependent he’s become on Dennis, how pathetic he must look to the younger man.

He ignores the text that Dennis sends him that night, and the two that arrive the next morning. He ignores all the others too, until they stop coming and the sudden absence is a terrifying void in his life that threatens to engulf him. He can’t sleep that night, and at 3am he’s out on the balcony with a nearly-empty bottle of whisky in one hand, listening to the pounding bass and occasional shrieks drifting upwards from a party somewhere down the road.

Dave finds him curled up on the sofa bed three days later, after what Kev can only assume was a welfare call from work. His GP signs him off for two weeks and Kev spends most of it in a chemical haze, ignoring the knocking on the front door and Dennis calling his name.

“Are you angry at him for leaving you alone or for going on a date with someone else?” his psychiatrist asks at his monthly meeting.

“Why would I care if he goes on a date?” Kev asks incredulously and she makes a note in the little book she keeps on him.

Kev cancels his follow-up appointment and goes back to work.

 

_February_

 

“Sick of chasing you,” Dennis says. The hospital sheets bleach the colour from his skin. “Can't fucking stop though. Driving me crazy.” He shakes his head, wincing.

There's only one other occupied bed in the bay and the elderly man in it is either asleep or dead: Kev can't bring himself to care which. He stares at his own hand gripping the rail of Dennis’ bed, the way his fingers curl around the smooth metal.

“You listening?” Dennis demands.

“Yeah.” Kev forces himself to look Dennis in the face and wishes he hadn't, because the pallor of Dennis’ skin and the exhaustion in his eyes are nothing to do with the broken leg that's landed him here. Nor of the painkillers he’s dosed up on either, painkillers that loosen his tongue and free him of the usual constraints.

“You look like shit.”

“Not sleeping,” Kev says briefly.

“I'm seeing a shrink,” Dennis says, unexpectedly.  Kev, stupidly, looks around. “Not in here. Before. Every two weeks.”

“Have you told them about-”

“No.”

Kev looks at his hand again. “Does it help?”

“Yeah. You still seeing yours?”

“No.”

The silence descends again, a deep and oppressive absence of sound that amplifies the pounding of Kev’s heart and his shaky, unsteady breaths. The weight of everything bears down on his chest, crushing his ribs, sapping the oxygen from his lungs. He can taste acrid smoke in his mouth and copper on his tongue.

Dennis lays his hand over Kev’s. The calluses on his palm are rough against Kev’s skin.

“Fucking hate hospitals,” he says softly, and all at once Kev can breathe again.

Dennis comes home with crutches, painkillers, and a commendation for bravery for saving a woman’s life, even if he did manage to fall through a rotten floorboard along the way. He sleeps a lot the first few days, drugged into unconsciousness, and the contrast between the unnatural immobility and his usual nightmare-filled nights is something Kev finds acutely jarring and unsettling. He finds himself staying awake through the night, for reasons that sound like lies even in his own head, and the nightmare Dennis suffers in the middle of his first drug-free sleep is also the first time that Kev is able to close his eyes and fall into an uneasy sleep of his own.

If neither of them has been what he used to think of as _normal_ for a long time, then at least there’s a peace in the space they share.

The kiss, when it happens, feels like coming home, a slow, almost tentative exploration at first that rapidly progresses to something more urgent, something darker and more desperate, Dennis’ mouth on his, sharing breath, each of them blindly seeking to be closer and closer still.

“What about your date?” Kev gasps.

Dennis grins against his lips, his hands fisted in the front of Kev’s shirt. “Didn’t work out.”

 _Good_ , Kev thinks deliriously. He can feel Dennis hard against him. “I-” he begins.

“S’all right,” Dennis says, his hand sliding confidently over Kev’s chest. The broken leg makes him clumsy, the cast catching against the edge of the sofa bed. “Don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

It doesn’t help, because Kev wants everything, without truly knowing what _everything_ might entail or whether his shattered mind and body will even allow it. He stares in wonder at his own hands moving possessively over Dennis’ body, lingers over the taste of Dennis’ skin against his tongue. It feels unreal that he’s allowed to do this, another fracture in the ruin of his mind and nothing more.

“All right?” Dennis asks with a smile that could light the room.

“Yeah,” Kev says and for the first time in a long time it feels like the truth.

 

_March_

Kev remembers that Trish still has a key to the front door round about the same time that the bedroom door starts to open, and there’s no time to do anything about the scene she’s confronted with as she steps inside. Kev settles for half-sitting up in bed, as much as Dennis’ arms around his waist will allow.

He sees the complicated play of emotions across her face as she takes it in. Dennis’ watch on the nightstand, the disordered bed, the unmistakeable smell of sex, Dennis naked and asleep in what was once the bed she and Kev shared.

“Well,” she says. “This is … new.”

It’s less judgemental than he expected, and maybe it was him that was in the wrong when he assumed that she’d react badly. They ended with pain and tears and then they ended again with a wave and a last moment of eye contact before Kev was loaded into an ambulance while Trish shivered on the foreshore wrapped in a police jacket.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Came to return your key.” She holds it up. “I found it in the bottom of my bag; I’d forgotten I got that spare made. Didn’t think you were in, so I thought I’d just sneak it back.”

Kev glances guiltily at the clock. “Took a few days off. Had leave to use up.”

“Back at work then?”

“Yeah.” Then, “How are you doing?”

She shrugs. “All right.”

Dennis shifts in his sleep, frowning, his hands tightening their hold on Kev. He still has nightmares sometimes, although less frequently than before. Kev sees Trish watching him with a faint frown on her face and feels irrationally defensive. This is something private, something just for the two of them.

“I’ll be going,” Trish says, taking a step towards the door.

Kev nearly lets her go, nearly lets her leave without another word, and it’s only at the last minute that he disengages himself from Dennis, pulls on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and hurries after her.

Because he needs this, needs the closure of a proper conversation that isn’t clouded by emotion and his own mental breakdown. Needs to sit with Trish like two people who loved each other once, who shared hopes and dreams and the promise of a future that can now never be. She couldn’t save him and Kev needs her to know that that’s ok.

“Keep in touch, yeah?” he says, genuinely, when Trish leaves.

She kisses his cheek, a light, platonic kiss. “Look after yourself,” she says. “And him,” she adds as an afterthought.

He steps out onto the balcony when she’s gone, turning his face into the weak sunlight of early spring. Behind him he hears a door open, footsteps, and then Dennis steps out onto the balcony too, wearing his own boxers and one of Kev’s t-shirts.

“All right?” he says cautiously, moving to stand next to Kev.

In the distance he can hear sirens. “Yeah,” Kev says, drinking in the sound of the word like the kiss Dennis presses to his cheek, by chance overlaying where Trish kissed him first. Kev snags his fingers in the waistband of Dennis’ boxers and kisses him again, properly this time.

“Breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

Dennis shuffles back indoors and Kev leans against the railing and lets the chill breeze caress his skin. He can hear Dennis moving around in the kitchen, and the soft clicks and raspy breathing from the adjoining balcony.

“Your young man moved in then,” Muriel says. “Feeling better, are you?”

Kev turns his head and smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think so.”


End file.
